“Bjorn, Duck-duck-duck!” Failsafe yelled.
Bjorn dove to the ground as arrows flew through where he had been a moment before. The arrows tore through trees and detonated anything they hit on impact. It wasn’t from an explosive but the sheer force behind each arrow. Bjorn wasn’t still for long as he had to keep moving. He couldn’t run; his body was full of wounds and burns, and he was bleeding profusely. The forest fire he started was spreading quickly, the ash in the air hiding most of his form as he limped along.
“It went that way!” He heard someone yell.
Bjorn couldn’t pinpoint the direction of the voice over the pain throbbing in his head. All he could do was drag himself as far away from them as possible. Then he tasted something in the air besides fire and smoke. It was a familiar and unsettling magic.
“Druids?” Bjorn asked.
The people that were chasing him weren’t druids, as he knew what their magic felt like. This was a different group altogether. He made a decision and hoped that the druids weren’t the friends of his pursuers. The magic put him at a diagonal from the path he was on; it also meant that he was giving up on a lead from them on a hunch.
“I hope I am right about this,” Bjorn said.
***
The smell of smoke had everyone on the skinwalker mission on heightened alert. It had been a quiet night otherwise, with everything going according to plan. The small fortification was built in the middle of the forest, away from monsters and hunting activities, to eliminate the possibility of detection. Druid architecture and fortifications were grown, not built. Illusionary magic hid them from sight, and runes grown directly into the flora hid their magic from all but the most sensitive scouring.
Kara was the leader of the new operation, although she did not feel qualified for the position. Her last mission ended with every member of her team being brutally killed by a troll clan. She wasn’t the commander of that squad that was killed, but the fact that she alone survived rocked her to her core. Not even her familiar managed to escape, which cut deeply, but she had a duty, and she would mourn once her mission was done.
The failure of the past mission was carved into her light-green body. Scars covered her body, though most were covered by combat robes aside from the claw marks across her face. Her antlers were broken, and she had a prosthetic left arm. She let the pain of losing so much fuel her, even now. Her men called her merciless, which she was to any of the cannibal savages or anyone who allied with them.
The camp above ground was small enough to leave as little footprint on their operations as possible. A central tree opened up to an underground base that housed their barracks and most essential equipment and supplies. Being druids, they didn’t need field rations; any plant, leaf, or grass was food. The only thing they didn’t bring into the underground bunker were the skinwalkers. They were kept above ground in cages that dampened the sound of their incessant screaming.
Kara was in her underground office going through the latest mission report from scouts. They had successfully released an additional six skinwalkers around the town. A few weeks ago, they already had two of which were self-realized and intelligent. The new ones weren’t, but the havoc they would cause before being found brought a smile to Kara’s face.
As soon as that scout left, a separate man entered. He was panicked and out of breath, which alerted Kara. Her smile was quickly replaced with a frown at the next report.
“We believe that one of the self-realized skinwalkers was found and killed,” the scout said.
“Are you sure about that?” Kara asked, her voice was sharp.
“There was a commotion within the settlement, which caused a convergence of a large portion of the guard forces to react. Monster hunters have also been called in from that human camp as well. All indications point to there being a confrontation.”
Kara rubbed her temple, “Well, how are the other skinwalkers coming along?”
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“We just captured an additional two wendigo. We will start the process to convert them at once.”
The process of turning a wendigo into a skinwalker was not a pleasant one, which made Kara all the happier. It involved torturing them as close to death without letting them slip through, ensuring it was as painful as possible until they either devolved or died. Kara saw the disgusting skinwalker as the true form of the cannibal savage. They were all just monsters pretending to wear the likeness of the Forest Father as false skin over their grotesque nature.
“If they don’t change, turn them into fertilizer for the forest,” Kara said, “We are accelerating our plans here and leaving for the next location by the end of the week.”
“Accelerating?” the scout asked.
Kara stood up and walked around her desk, “All of the skinwalkers we have need to be released over the next five days. All prisoners converted or killed. Then I want every possible trace that we’re here to be destroyed.”
The scout saluted, and Kara dismissed him so she could get back to work. The conversation with the scouts would elevate their plan, but they had been there long enough. It was best that they move to another major town, especially now that the domain is in the middle of political changes.
She rubbed her prosthetic arm, which was living wood grown into the remaining flesh of her arm by a healer. She couldn’t feel anything through the prosthetic, but she could move it as if it were her organic appendage. Every now and then, she would have what druids called the echo of pain. She was tired of being in her office, so she left, finally feeling ready to prepare for bed.
She locked her office door, and an alarm blared throughout the underground bunker. Something entered the illusion barrier. Had they been found out so soon? It didn’t make any sense, so she ran to see what was going on. Steffen, her second-in-command, found her and ran alongside her. He was a stern no-nonsense man with the stereotypical sharpness of a tactician. He readjusted his glasses on his nose as he joined her. He was a man who she had come to rely on, a master of organization and logistics, which placed him well above her in either. As they ran, he was giving orders to everyone they saw.
“Do you know what is going on?” Kara asked.
“No, but we should find out soon,” Steffen responded.
A man ran down the stairwell they were approaching. He saluted and relayed a message that took Kara a few seconds to process. A heavily injured familiar was being chased into their camp by a pack of werewolf monster hunters. There was also a massive forest fire approaching with unusual flames that were brimming with some unknown magic. They couldn’t just ignore it either, as the large spike of magic in the area was drawing monsters like literal moths to the flame. The intelligent and powerful monsters would stay away, but crawling stalkers and other weaker monsters were approaching the camp in droves.
Kara was glad Steffen was there because he immediately took in the information and started organizing the men without missing a beat. He dismissed the soldier who reported to set up defenses. Even if werewolves aren’t their enemy, they can’t leave now that they have seen this place. On top of that, they had to prepare to defend themselves against an encroaching monster wave.
“Commander, we may need you in the fight,” Steffen said, “I suggest getting your armor and staff. I will handle things here.”
“Yes, you are right,” Kara agreed.
***
Bjorn didn’t see anything in front of him aside from the all-encompassing dark forest. However, when he squeezed through some particularly thick bushes, suddenly the world shifted. He tasted and felt the instant change in ambient mana. What he thought was just more forest was actually a brightly lit dirt clearing.
The ground looked like it had been churned into fresh earth or like all of the trees that used to be in the area uprooted themselves and moved only to replant themselves further away. He looked around, and there was only one tree in the distance, but as he watched, druids in combat robes and armor and familiars filed out of it like ants from a mound.
Roots exploded from the ground around the tree, creating an instant barricade for the druids to defend from all angles. Then more roots shot forward, creating spikes to further dismay anyone from approaching. That wasn’t what disturbed Bjorn. What sickened him were the cages held in the air over the tree by the branches, or rather, the cages were the tree’s branches.
“What the fuck!” Bjorn exclaimed.
“I-I think we know where the skinwalkers came from,” Failsafe said just as shocked.
There were wendigo up there, some alive, but most unmoving. Then there were skinwalkers howling and trying to break free of their confinement. It looked like some sick macabre art piece created by deranged psychopaths. Bjorn didn’t have the time, power, or wherewithal to do anything about what he was seeing.
“Bjorn, we have to keep moving,” Failsafe continued, “We can’t do anything about them right now.”
He stuck to the perimeter of the barrier and hobbled as fast as he could around the grim structure. He saw some of the druid soldiers tracking him from the barricades, but none of them went on the attack. Bjorn assumed that, as long as he didn’t go closer, they wouldn’t. Bjorn had to force himself not to look up at the tree, and the morbid cries for help from the wendigo intermingled with the deranged howlings of the skinwalkers.